Last
fall season, it was all about pushing the envelope: threatened by cable
and the fragmented audience, the networks launched a set of risk-taking
programs  "Action," "Freaks and Geeks," "Now and Again"  which, with the exception of "The West Wing" and "Malcolm in the Middle,"
pretty much bombed.

This year, cowed by the success of the old-fashioned, '50s-style "Who
Wants to be a Millionaire," the networks are, with few exceptions, staying
safely inside the envelope. Which means this year's fall lineup practically
looks like a "Nick at Nite" schedule, filled with time-machine journeys
to TV formats past: Bette Midler doing a Jack Benny–style sitcom (debuting
Oct. 11) about herself, Aaron Spelling doing an '80s-style prime-time
soap, CBS giving us the second remake of "The Fugitive," and the WB giving
us "Hype," a "revolutionary" sketch-comedy show that looks, well, pretty
much life every other sketch-comedy show to debut in the last 15 years.
(And that's not even counting all the wrestling.)

Whether that's good business remains to be seen: No sooner were the shows
announced in May than never-seen-it-before "Survivor" became the biggest
hit of the year. For viewers, the retro slate's generally bad news, but
there's some hope. Herewith, a 21st-century premiere-week survival guide:

Sunday,
Oct. 1

That's
Life (CBS, 8 p.m.  all times Eastern) If the Italian American
milieu in this comedy-drama were any more overfamiliar and phony, it'd
be served at The Olive Garden with unlimited breadsticks and salad. In
case you should ever forget the ethnicity of the characters, the soundtrack
is packed with Frank Sinatra tunes, "That's Amore" and "Mambo Italiano,"
and there's actually a character with the surname Buttafucco (sic). That
said, this series, about Lydia DeLucca (Heather Paige Kent), a 32-year-old
New Jersey woman who ditches her troglodyte fiancé to go back to college,
is cleverly directed and makes a few fresh observations. The DeLucca family
Sunday-dinner ritual  the meal is wolfed down, to the ticking of
an egg timer, during halftime of the Giants game  is a great set
piece. The series will have to lose the red-sauce clichés before we start
watching it with that kind of devotion, but its good humor and uncompetitive
time slot (Saturdays at 8, with no other scripted series scheduled against
it, starting next week) could make it a sleeper.

Monday,
Oct. 2

Tucker
(NBC, 8:30 p.m.) Let it not be said that this story about a hormonally
charged boy and his wacky family is an unoriginal rip-off of "Malcolm
in the Middle." No, in an innovative twist, the makers of this sitcom
deftly took out everything imaginative, funny and good-hearted about "Malcolm,"
replacing it with insult comedy and erection jokes. As the title child,
Eli Marienthal is the most irritating kid on television since Hallie Eisenberg
made her first Pepsi commercial. If this series lasts more than two episodes,
somebody needs to be horsewhipped.

Deadline
(NBC, 9 p.m.) The journalism community has already unsheathed its
red pencils over the portrayal of reporters in this crime hour from the
maker of the reliably fine "Law & Order." Oliver Platt  one of
several movie actors whom, this season, you will learn you were apparently
dying to see star in a TV series  is an abrasive New York tabloid
columnist who manages to solve crime capers with a class of journalism
students on the side. The over-the-top first couple of episodes combine
"L&O"–style forensicism with the supposedly colorful antics of a suite
of journalistic clichés, played by a misused cast of fine actors (Bebe
Neuwirth, Lili Taylor, Hope Davis), and neither element works here. Some
have suggested the producers, who consulted New York journalists in developing
the series, could have done their homework better. I say they probably
did it too well. No one is more likely to draw you a corny, clichéd picture
of the journalism biz than journalists themselves, especially when being
flattered with the attentions of a Hollywood big-shot producer. Get me
rewrite.

Tuesday,
Oct. 3

Dark
Angel (Fox, 9 p.m.) You could tune to ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS tonight
and watch a reasoned exchange between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Or you
could tune in to this sci-fi action thriller and watch the reasoned exchange
between star Jessica Alba's foot and the asses of several thugs twice
her size. As a bioengineered superbabe on the run from a military program
in a dystopic year 2020 after a terrorist attack has wiped out America's
computers and started a depression  whew!  Alba is to "Dark
Angel" what Keanu Reeves was to "The Matrix." And that's a compliment.
Even if the comic-book-y script doesn't let her exercise many acting chops,
she's perfect for this heavily physical action role, not just easy on
the eyes but possessed of the grace and poise that lends her a stature
greater than her pint-sized frame. Produced by effects master James Cameron,
the pilot is a visually breathtaking and stylish can of whoop-ass that
your TV is probably too small to handle.

Wednesday,
Oct. 4

Titans
(NBC, 8 p.m.) Produced by trash-TV king Aaron Spelling, starring Yasmine
Bleeth (yes, this may be the first network series named after its costar's
breasts), Victoria Principal and Jack Wagner, this Beverly Hills family-saga
soap is as good as you'd expect it to be, and worse. True, Aaron Spelling
has proven before that you'll never go broke telling the American public
that rich people are miserable. (Though Spelling seems pretty well contented
himself, so go figure.) But at least his latest successful stand at the
soap genre, "Melrose Place," did it in an original way, focusing on struggling,
if beautiful, young people, whereas "Titans" is nothing but a stiffly acted "Dynasty" retread, two decades later. NBC
may be hoping the show gets an ironic, retro embrace, but this soap is
just Beverly Hills, 9021-over.

Thursday,
Oct. 5

Gilmore
Girls (WB, 8 p.m.) Let's be honest. You are not going to watch this
show. You will be watching "Friends" instead. But here is what you will
be missing: the teen-heavy WB network growing up (ever so slightly) with
a gently funny, unsentimental comedy-drama about the tug-of-war between
a 32-year-old mother and her 16-year-old daughter. Lauren Graham ("M.Y.O.B.")
is charming and comic as a single mom, with parent issues of her own,
trying to hold her life together while managing a New England inn full
of slightly loopy characters. (Between this and the B&B on "Dawson's Creek,"
the WB seems to be aiming to be the New England Hospitality Industry Network.)
Anyway. Aren't Chandler and Monica cute together?

Friday,
Oct. 6

The
Trouble With Normal (ABC, 8:30 p.m.) Sometimes you have to give the
makers of a series credit for bringing through the development process
an idea so ridiculous you'd think it was an "SNL" parody. Starring Jon
Cryer  a good enough comic actor but the kiss of death to the short-lived
series he's appeared in  this laff-a-century sitcom follows the
zany adventures of a therapy group of paranoids. It'll likely be canceled
by, oh, about 8:53 tonight, but the producers were able to waste large
amounts of the Disney corporation's money in the process, and for that,
I salute them.

The
Fugitive (CBS, 8 p.m.) Is it just me, or is seeing Tim Daly's glowering
face in the ads for this remake  that's Tim Daly from "Wings"  kind of like seeing Danny DeVito as Napoleon on all those billboards
in the movie "Get Shorty"? Daly may not be a natural action hero as Dr.
Richard Kimble, but Mykelti Williamson at least makes a commanding Lt.
Gerard. This is a competent, movielike action hour  nothing more,
nothing less  that owes far more to the explosive Tommy Lee Jones
movie than to the often menacing, noir-y 1960s ABC series. It is interesting,
in a fall when the executin'-est governor in the U.S. is running for president,
to see a network reviving a series based on a miscarriage of justice.
But the interest is pretty much theoretical.

Saturday

The
District (CBS, 10 p.m.) Damn, can that Craig T. Nelson yell! Starring
as a Great White Hope police commissioner sent to clean up Washington,
D.C., Nelson displays a set of pipes barely hinted at in his years on
"Coach," spending the long pilot hour barking, bloviating, singing(!)
and generally chewing the scenery. “No, YOU hold on!," he screams at an
incompetent police underling, one of several shiftless African Americans
depicted in a cornball, overwritten drama with truly creepy racial politics.
"Can you tell me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS CITY!?!” Um, how about
an uninspiring lead using volume as a substitute for acting?

Sunday

Ed
(NBC, 8 p.m.) Man gets fired from New York law firm, man loses wife
to mailman, man moves back home to Stuckeyville, Ohio, courts his unrequited
high school love, buys a bowling alley and opens a law practice within
it. Will TV producers never stop recycling these stale formulas? Actually,
there is one thing a little familiar about "Ed"; its yuppie "Green Acres"
premise and eccentric humor are more than a little reminiscent of "Northern
Exposure." But "Ed" has a respect for Stuckeyville's residents that the condescending urbanite's
fantasy "Exposure" never did. Adorable and often hilarious, "Ed" is the
TV equivalent of a good date movie. As an ironic plus, it's produced by
Worldwide Pants, the production company of David Letterman. In the second
episode Ed represents an aging magician suing over the theft of his act,
or "intellectual property"  the same phrase that NBC invoked to
screw Letterman out of much of his act when he took his show to CBS in
1993. "Ed" is sweet. But revenge is sweeter.